In this piece, I review the evidence on muscle damage. Does it really cause hypertrophy? I was surprised to find out that, after all, it probably doesn’t.

I would have been *shocked* to hear that 12 years ago, as an undergrad exercise scientist… At any rate, if you’re working out to damage your muscles and think you’ll grow faster that way, it may be time to reconsider.

A promising way to build muscle is metabolic stress. Using techniques like rest-pause, you can build just as much (or more) muscle in half the workout time. If you’re curious to try it out, we’ve recently automated it in Dr. Muscle.

Practical applications: training for muscular hypertrophy
Since it seems that damage only plays a minimal role in muscle hypertrophy, when training for hypertrophy, I’d recommend you focus on the other mechanisms of muscle growth (such as tension and metabolic stress).

I would agree with Damas et al.’s conclusion here that: “based on current evidence […] the hypothesis of damage having a minor (or even large) role in explaining or potentiating muscle hypertrophy is speculative at this point.”